Security for Education

Improve Campus and Student Safety with Security Technology

Using Video Security on School Campuses

Prioritizing student safety, teacher safety, and facility safety is a must for schools looking to instill a safe learning environment. Given the prevalence of school-based violence today, school officials shouldn’t wait for an incident to occur before prioritizing security.

To better prepare themselves for any future situation, school safety and security teams turn to video security as a way of reducing campus crime and enhancing visibility into day-to-day activities and operations.

How are Security Camera Systems used on School Campuses?

• Deter Crime on Campus: Security in schools can also safeguard schools from more common, day-to-day incidents. Specifically, school security cameras discourage instances of school-based vandalism, larceny, and assault, as well as many additional types of suspicious or nefarious behavior, by regulating and standardizing school visitor management around the clock.
• Enforce Positive Student & Teacher Behaviors: To reinforce positive student and teacher conduct, many officials depend on cameras. By monitoring footage from security cameras in classrooms and hallways, school security personnel can ensure that proper school conduct is being observed.
• Incident Resolution: Most inter-student conflicts include two opposing accounts of an incident. Cameras give school administrators the ability to consult definitive video evidence of an event. Having cameras in schools can also offer objective video evidence of incidents involving harm or theft in classrooms, hallways, and other high-traffic areas. This footage is used to identify suspects, and serves as compelling evidence during the disciplinary phase of investigations.
• Remotely Monitor Large Open Spaces: For school or campus safety teams at safe educational institutions, increasing situational awareness is an ongoing goal. These schools aim to provide reliable Security for large facilities to ensure school gym, auditorium, parking lot, and playground safety. Ultimately, these schools maintain a level of situational awareness that schools and colleges without Security simply can’t reach.
• Remotely Monitor Entrances, Exits, and Other Blind Spots: Monitoring blind spots such as entrances and exits can mitigate any school safety risks. In fact, the best school safety teams implement 24/7 recording in high-traffic or high-risk areas such as these. By recording all activity during and after business hours, officials are substantially more likely to catch intruders and unauthorized activities.
• Give Parents Peace of Mind: Actively monitoring footage from cameras can reinforce the confidence and trust that parents have in their child’s school, and can give them peace of mind during the day. As a result, proactively monitoring—and even rewarding—positive student and teacher behavior can be an integral part of school safety procedures today.

Must-Have Features for Campus Video Security:

• Ability to Quickly Find & Share Footage: To ensure student safety, being able to quickly access and share footage of time-sensitive events is critical. When emergencies arise, truly safe schools won’t be tied up searching for footage, and law enforcement won’t be held up by it. With centralized footage, the ability to quickly find incidents of interest, and the ability to quickly share this footage with authorities, will give these schools the best chance at quick, safe, and calm emergency resolution.
• Easy Non-Technical User Experience: Installing cameras that require technical fluency substantially limits the role principals, superintendents, and front office personnel can take in monitoring. This places responsibility of footage access and retrieval on school safety and security IT personnel, rather than on the stakeholders who require the footage. This leads to slower incident resolution, overcommitted school IT departments, and—as a result—less-than-ideal safety on campus.
• Low-Bandwidth School Cameras: Improving school safety shouldn’t necessitate reductions to on-campus Internet speed and capability. Security cameras can be significant consumers of bandwidth, which can lead to compromised video quality, limited video storage, and even system failure. It’s important to find school Security cameras so schools don’t have to choose between expensive bandwidth upgrades and child safety in school. In fact, a security solution with sufficiently low bandwidth consumption can even enable bus cameras for school bus monitoring.
• Affordable: Most school officials unfortunately have razor-thin school safety budgets, so it’s necessary to prioritize affordability when searching for a campus safety and security option. Oftentimes, cheaper cameras possess lower camera quality and decreased footage usability, which jeopardizes K-12 and college safety. Instead, officials should consider vendors who offer 10-year product warranties, which make it easy for schools to offset costs of maintenance over time, as well as systems that offer high levels of coverage per camera.

How Education Stakeholders Use School Video Security

Security and Campus Patrol

• Can remotely monitor large areas more effectively
• Can reduce bullying and optimize bullying intervention programs
• Can keep intruders out without stationing security officers at each access point

Principals and Superintendents

• Can see and track what’s happening at each school facility
• Can remotely monitor day-to-day operations, as well as teacher and staff efficiency
• Can use in campus security footage in disciplinary cases and liability claims

Teachers, Students, & Parents

• Can attend school more securely and confidently
• Can conduct campus functions and events more securely
• Can enforce positive behaviors on campus

Final Takeaways: Using Video Security for Campus Safety

From school bus security cameras to national bullying programs inspired by camera footage, there are endless ways Security can serve school officials willing and able to use it. Without Security in schools, K-12 and college campus security teams are risking a lack of visibility and streamlined process.

Put simply, it is this Security visibility that enables efficient, educated incident response—and it is this incident response that enables kids to be safe at school.

America’s Frontline Workers in Crisis

This is a difficult moment for front-line workers. Already overextended, the average American worker is dealing with a new on-the-job concern: they don’t feel safe at work.

It’s hard to blame them. Today we see images of workers being accosted by irate fast food customers, aggressive airline passengers and violent hospital patients. Every hour, two nurses in the United States are the victims of assault at their workplace. Nearly half of hospital nurses reported a rise in workplace violence last year, with a year-on-year increase of 119 percent. Assaults and theft in retail settings have been increasing at a faster pace than the national average, and retail workers are tired of fearing for their safety.

The people who serve in these critical roles, driving our economy and providing a service to the public, make up the vast majority of America’s workforce today. Approximately 70 percent of the U.S. workforce is concentrated in front-line jobs, from healthcare to retail and service sectors, and beyond.

To better understand the state of workplace safety and the emotional toll it takes on front-line workers, Verkada surveyed 1,000 professionals across major industries, including consumer banking, healthcare, retail, and hospitality. Our findings, which are detailed in this report, shine a light on the challenges facing front-line workers today.

Download the full survey here.

Benefits and Limitations of Hybrid Cloud Video Storage

Hybrid Cloud Video Storage

Hybrid cloud security systems use a combination of onboard camera storage with a cloud data storage solution. These systems often provide a wealth of benefits over standard Internet protocol (IP) security camera offerings and give users a greater degree of flexibility than pure cloud cameras—which require a consistent Internet connection consuming large amounts of network bandwidth.

What is a Hybrid Cloud Security System?

Because hybrid cloud systems dramatically decrease the amount of bandwidth required, the system is highly suitable for larger scale deployments that require a multitude of cameras to operate on the same network. This makes the hybrid cloud approach to video security a great option for retail stores, schools, municipalities, manufacturers and other security-conscious organizations that need coverage across large open areas.

How Do Hybrid Cloud Surveillance Systems Work?

Having only recently entered the market, hybrid cloud video storage approaches decade old problems (i.e. storage limitations, gaps in coverage, limited scalability) with a software-first mindset.

• NVR & DVR Camera System vs. Hybrid Cloud Surveillance: By removing the dependency of centralized recorders (i.e. network video recorders), hybrid cloud cameras are easier to install and scale across locations. With solid-state drives built into each camera, there is no worry of losing footage across any entire wing of a building should a local recorder fail. Maintaining a hybrid cloud video security system is also significantly easier than a NVR camera system. With firmware and software updates that deploy across the entire fleet automatically, eliminate the need to conduct timely audits and manual updates.
• Cloud Storage vs. Hybrid Cloud Video Storage: Rather than consuming large amounts of bandwidth by streaming footage continuously to the cloud, hybrid cloud cameras upload only select metadata and activity-triggered footage. As a result, hybrid cloud surveillance solutions are optimal for low-bandwidth situations, as they are able to perform reliably, even over an LTE network. With the added reliability of local storage, hybrid cloud cameras are uninterrupted in the event of network outages, making it more dependable than cloud cameras.

Main Features of Hybrid Cloud Security Systems

Discover some of the main features of hybrid cloud video security and see how they offer enterprise-level businesses the best of both worlds when it comes to security and storage.

• Cloud & Local Video Storage: Traditional security solutions, which depend on a consistent Internet connection or centralized recorders (i.e. NVR, DVR) for all cameras, are always at the risk of losing coverage. However, hybrid cloud cameras eliminate any single point of failure, as they record and store all footage locally on the camera and in the cloud. With this distributed approach to storing video footage, ensure continuous recording and no gaps in surveillance footage.
• Bandwidth Friendly: Unlike cloud camera systems, which continuously upload large amounts of video data to the cloud, hybrid cloud solutions benefit from retaining footage locally while using minimal network data to upload metadata and thumbnails to the cloud. Hybrid cloud surveillance is optimal for use in remote areas, as it requires significantly less bandwidth than cloud camera systems.
• Highly Scalable: Compared to a traditional NVR/DVR solution–which often has a quantity cap on the amount cameras it can support–hybrid cloud surveillance scales with the needs of your business. Since there is no need for a centralized recording device to support on-premise recording, hybrid cloud cameras can be installed without the worry of added infrastructure.
• Easy to Install: Many security vendors offer hybrid cloud camera systems that only require a PoE (power-over-Ethernet) connection to get started. This makes these surveillance solutions particularly easy to implement and well-suited for businesses that need to evolve their video security without having to invest in additional infrastructure.
• Cost-Effective: Many security vendors that offer hybrid cloud solutions provide simple cost breakdowns, making it easy to forecast recurring costs. Rather than unpredictable expenses associated with installation, maintenance, and storage (i.e. operating system updates, maintaining storage servers, costs for technical configurations), simplify total cost of ownership over time with vendors that disclose complete line items and associated costs.

Benefits of Hybrid Cloud Security System

Takeaways About Hybrid Cloud Video Storage

All things considered, it’s worth exploring what a hybrid cloud video security system can provide for enterprise-level businesses. This new approach to storing video footage–specifically for enterprise video security–makes it simple for IT, Security, and Loss Prevention professionals to find confidence in surveillance without worrying about storage limitations or gaps in coverage.

Cloud computing has revolutionized the way businesses operate. It offers scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. But cloud services also come with a downside: cloud waste.

Cloud waste is the unnecessary spending of resources and money on cloud services. These services are often not fully utilized or optimized. About 32% of cloud spending is wasted. This can lead to budget concerns as spending
skyrockets.

But that figure also holds opportunity. It means that you can reduce nearly a third of cloud spending by optimizing how you use cloud tools.

So, how can you reduce cloud waste at your business and save money? Here are some smart tactics to consider.

Conduct a Comprehensive Cloud Audit

Before implementing any cost-cutting strategies, conduct an audit. It’s essential to have a clear understanding of your current cloud usage. Conducting a comprehensive cloud audit allows you to identify:

• Underutilized resources
• Overprovisioned instances
• Unnecessary services

Use cloud management tools to generate reports. Look at usage patterns, costs, and performance metrics. This initial assessment forms the foundation for implementing effective waste reduction tactics.

Put in Place Right-Sizing Strategies

Right-sizing involves matching your cloud resources to the actual demands of your workloads. Many businesses fall into the trap of overprovisioning. This means securing more user licenses or features than they need. This leads to increased costs and unnecessary waste.

Analyze your workload requirements and resize instances accordingly. Use tools provided by your cloud service provider. These tools can identify and adjust the capacity of instances. This ensures that you only pay for the resources you truly need.

Use Reserved Instances and Savings Plans

Cloud providers offer cost-saving options like Reserved Instances (RIs) and Savings Plans. These allow businesses to commit to a specific amount of usage. This is in exchange for discounted rates. By leveraging these options, you can significantly reduce your cloud costs over time.

Carefully analyze your workload and usage patterns. Then, determine the most cost-effective reserved capacity or savings plan. Find a plan that aligns with your business’s long-term goals.

Install Automated Scaling Policies

Dynamic workloads have a need for dynamic resource allocation. Install automated scaling policies. These ensure that your infrastructure scales up or down based on demand. This optimizes performance. It also prevents overprovisioning during periods of low activity.

Cloud services enable you to set predefined policies for scaling. Examples are AWS Auto Scaling and Autoscale in Azure. These features help ensure efficient resource utilization without manual intervention.

Track and Optimize Storage

Storage costs can accumulate quickly. This is especially true when data is not regularly reviewed and archived. Estimate your storage needs. Then, put in place lifecycle policies to automatically downsize lesser-used data such as transitioning less frequently accessed data to lower-cost storage options.

Regularly review and delete unnecessary data to free up storage space. Adopt a proactive approach to storage management. This can help you significantly reduce costs associated with data storage.

Schedule Your Cloud Resources

Schedule your cloud resources to run only when you need them. For example, turn off development, testing, or staging environments during nights and weekends. Or scale down your production environment during off-peak hours.

Use available tools to automate the scheduling of your cloud resources. Base this on automated rules and policies that you define.

Delete Unused or Orphaned Cloud Resources

Sometimes, you may forget or neglect to delete cloud resources. Resources that you no longer need or use. This can include:

• Snapshots
• Backups
• Volumes
• Load balancers
• IP addresses
• Unused accounts

These resources can accumulate over time and incur unnecessary costs. To avoid this, you should regularly audit your cloud environment. Delete any unused or orphaned resources your business is not using. You can often use cloud provider tools to find and remove these.

Weed Out Duplicate Services

Different departments in the same organization may be using duplicate services. Marketing may use one task management app, while Sales uses a different one. Centralize cloud resources and remove duplicate tools.

Having everyone use the same cloud tool for the same function can save money as well as enhance collaboration, reporting, and data integration.

Embrace Serverless Architecture

Serverless computing allows businesses to run applications without managing the underlying infrastructure. You pay only for the actual compute resources used for your processes. This eliminates the need for provisioning and maintaining servers. Which reduces both operational complexity and costs. Consider migrating suitable workloads to a serverless model. This can help you optimize resource use and cut cloud waste.

Schedule a Cloud Optimization Assessment Today!

By following these smart tactics, you can reduce cloud waste at your business as well as optimize your cloud spending. This helps you save money. You can also improve operational efficiency and environmental sustainability.

Are you struggling with expanding cloud costs? Need help identifying and removing cloud waste? Our team of cloud experts can help you.

Contact us today to schedule your assessment.

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Featured Image Credit

This Article has been Republished with Permission from The Technology Press.